Inching Toward Gridlock

But Road Widening May Bring Relief

November 14, 1993|By JONATHAN GOLDSTEIN Daily Press

NEWPORT NEWS — William Good Jr.'s jaw dropped when he was told a huge Lowe's building supply store and an even bigger HQ Home Quarters Warehouse are slated to open next year on Jefferson Avenue near the Interstate 64 interchange.

"Oh my God," he said. "That road's a madhouse as it is."

Every day, shoppers and commuters fight Jefferson's gnarl between Oyster Point Road and Denbigh Boulevard, stopping and starting through backups at traffic lights, shopping center turn lanes and interstate merge lanes. Logging about one crash a week, the congested stretch is one of the most dangerous roadways in the city, traffic planners say.

City officials say plans to widen Jefferson and build an alternate road nearby will more than offset any traffic the new stores will attract, but Good and other motorists say the situation is bound to go from bad to worse.

"Look at the traffic we have now," Good said Wednesday after finishing a shopping trip to Wal-Mart. "There are just too many cars and too many people."

Good, who lives on Colony Road, said he is seldom able to drive anywhere near the 45 mph speed limit on his way to and from work at Newport News Shipbuilding's complex at Jefferson and Oyster Point Road.

City councilmen acknowledge that development along Jefferson Avenue will bring more traffic, but they say the additional services and tax money that accompany development make it worth the inconvenience.

"Nobody gave you the God-given right to drive 45 mph until you get where you're going," Vice Mayor Marty Williams said. "If we're going to have a growing tax base, we've got to put up with some additional traffic."

Mostafa Sabbah, director of engineering for Newport News, agreed that parts of Jefferson are seriously overburdened.

The section between I-64 and Bland Boulevard - where Wal-Mart and Sam's Club are located and where Lowe's is under construction - is traveled by about 57,000 vehicles per day, Sabbah said. Lowe's shoppers are expected to add another 3,600 vehicles per day to the stretch.

That portion of the road, which has five lanes, was built to handle 30,000 vehicles a day.

The result: Slow traffic and frequent accidents.

From September 1992 to last September, 49 accidents were reported on the stretch, according to a city study. More than 80 percent involved one car crashing into the rear of another.

"That's a lot of accidents," Sabbah said. "It's one of the most dangerous areas for traffic in the city."

It's also more dangerous than similar stretches around the state, said Gerald Venable, assistant state traffic engineer with the Virginia Department of Transportation.

Motorists on that part of Jefferson are about 25 percent more likely to have an accident than drivers on other comparable Virginia roads, Venable said.

"It's probably related to the congestion," he added.

But disgruntled drivers should not give up hope, city planners say. Some relief is on the way.

The state has already begun a $24 million project to widen Jefferson to six lanes from I-64 to Buchanan Drive, one block north of Denbigh Boulevard. That would increase its capacity to about 55,000 cars per day, Sabbah said, the same as the southern part of Jefferson, where traffic moves more freely.

Construction is scheduled to finish in late 1995, Sabbah said.

The city and a private contractor are also building a road that will carry traffic directly from Bland Boulevard to Lowe's, Wal-Mart and Sam's Club, allowing motorists to reach the stores without using Jefferson. That road - Chatham Drive - will be open by February, cost the city about $250,000 and divert 6,000 to 8,000 cars per day from Jefferson, Sabbah said.

"The situation is bad now, but I think it will be much better when those projects are done," he said.

If the projects work the way officials expect, the 1995 daily traffic count on Jefferson in front of Wal-Mart will be about 5,000 below capacity.

Whether the new capacity will keep up with growth remains to be seen, however. The volume of traffic on all of Jefferson grew by 8.5 percent per year from 1986 to 1992, according to a city survey. Even with growth at half that rate, traffic would again exceed Jefferson's capacity before the end of the decade.

But Sabbah estimated that traffic growth near the interchange will probably slow to 2 or 3 percent per year after Lowe's is built because most development will take place either north or south of that section.

"In that segment, the area is almost fully developed," he said. "With Sam's and Wal-Mart and Lowe's completed, there isn't going to be much land left."

Sabbah said the 145,000-square-foot HQ store, which will be built across from Patrick Henry Mall about a mile south of Lowe's, should not pose a traffic problem - even though it is expected to draw 4,000 additional vehicles per day to the stretch of Jefferson from I-64 south to Oyster Point Road.

That section is currently traveled by about 41,000 cars per day, but can handle 55,000 because it already has six lanes.